


The Emperor and his Jedi

by Daenerion



Category: Star Wars
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, non-canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-22 17:51:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4844807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daenerion/pseuds/Daenerion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The burgeoning love between the Emperor and a Jedi...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Enclave

The battle was steadily winding down in and around the now ruined Jedi Enclave on the planet of Tanaab. The Enclave’s highly skilled guardians were either scattered on the ground, dead, or they were being rounded up and put in bindings as prisoners of war. Many Jedi joined them, both on the ground and in bindings, their flame of proud defiance completely extinguished. Some glared at him in disgust, others stared in fear and a few looked at him with astonishment. Probably for exactly the same reason, the fact that he was Sith, but not just any Sith, the Sith Emperor.  
He looked around the once beautiful grounds of the ruined enclave, trees were uprooted left and right, craters dotted the grass and walk-ways and blood stained the stones of the walls and walk-ways in places. The statues of Jedi that once stood proudly before the entrance to the Tanaab enclave where now smashed to pieces and scattered across the ground, nothing left but debris and dust. He entered the enclave through the remnants of the enormous durasteel doors that once secured it against attackers; he looked to the walls and roof of the enclave then and was immediately impressed at the beauty and opulence that the Jedi adorned their buildings with. He always had an eye for and appreciated beauty, all beauty, even beauty wrought in the name of his enemies.  
The frescoes, tapestries and other artworks that adorned the walls and ceiling of the enclave were truly amazing to behold. They reminded him of the Sistine Chapel in the city of Rome on Terra. They were utterly gorgeous to gaze upon, scenes of peace and prosperity and of kindness and friendship; it made him feel nostalgic for the days of his youth. However, unlike the Sistine Chapel’s artworks, these were all marked by the taint that was war. Blaster scorch marks dotted them as well as cracks and flames ate at some of the tapestries as he walked past them. He looked to the ground and noticed the dead guardians and Jedi with their eyes staring blankly towards the roof.  
The eyes of the dead do not see the beauty of the world of the living, he thought, looking at the body of a young Jedi, tears still wet on his face as his lifeless eyes looked towards a statue of Luke Skywalker, the statue emotionless and blank. He turned his gaze away from the young Jedi, finding that the young Jedi’s corpse reminded him of his now dead youngest son, the son that he fought this war of vengeance over, he was fearful of the havoc his emotions would cause him to wreak upon this place. He pushed the grief from his mind and pressed on, leaving the dead Jedi to gaze upwards with his tear stained face.  
His forces had done very well, while the ground was littered with the corpses of guardians and Jedi alike, very few of his own troopers and Sith joined them. This pleased him and thus he beckoned one of his aids that had followed him into the enclave to approach him. He recognised the young man, “Ensign, Paval is it?”  
The young man nodded nervously.  
“Please make preparations aboard the Vengeance for a victory feast to be held tonight. Today the men did very well, taking an entire planet in a single day as well as a Jedi enclave in a few hours was excellent work.”  
Ensign Paval took down the orders on his tablet and looked to the Emperor with questioning eyes, “Will that be all your Highness?”  
However, before Daniele could finish his orders to Ensign Paval, the distinctive sound of a lightsabre igniting caught his attention and he looked up to find that a Jedi wielding a blue lightsabre was careening towards him from a ventilation shaft in the wall. He managed to draw his own lightsabre just in time to block the blow to his head. Red sabre locked with blue as Daniele and the Jedi faced off. The Emperor in his cold Iron Crown and the Jedi masked and hooded. Neither fighter was willing to back down, thus their sabres remained locked. Daniele took this time to analyse his opponent, the Jedi was female, slight of build, average height and quite strong in the Force.  
Satisfied that he had a good measure of his opponent, Daniele began to push the Jedi back using his superior strength. The Jedi, sensing she was about to be overwhelmed, broke the lock and somersaulted over Daniele’s head and tried to attack him from behind. However, Daniele may have been large, but he was fast as well. He blocked the Jedi’s strikes, two for his head, one for his gut and a fourth for his legs. He kept up with the much younger Jedi and could easily outpace her, but his curiosity got the better of him and he forced a lock again.  
“A mixture of Ataru and Makashi forms as well as some Soresu. All well developed, but lacking in a certain refinement, wouldn’t you say?” he teased the Jedi.  
In response the Jedi gave ground and jumped onto the head of a statue and gestured with her free hand, the bottom of the statue cracked and it toppled towards Daniele. This caught him off guard and the stunned look on his face must have given his opponent a moment’s satisfaction. He steeled himself and focussed on the Force. He threw out his arms and splayed his hands, all the while, careful not to lose his grip on his lightsabre. He grabbed onto the statue with the Force and crushed it into pebbles and dust before it even hit the ground. When the dust cleared his opponent stood near an archway heading deeper into the enclave. A few troopers to his right opened fire on the Jedi; she dodged most of the blasts and deflected the rest with her light sabre.  
“Hold your fire!” shouted Daniele, “She’s mine!” With that their chase began. The Jedi running deeper into the enclave while Daniele gave chase not far behind, doing his best to keep her in his line of sight if not within his reach. She was incredibly fast, the Force coursing through her body at an alarming rate. Daniele sensed that she was delving into the dark side of the Force in order to keep ahead of him. This pleased him to no end, for this Jedi could definitely be turned from her unnatural and suppressive ways if she was so willing to give into her anger and grief.  
“Don’t run little Jedi, there is no point in running from me, either I will catch you or you will give in to your hate, your fear and your grief,” said Daniele in his most seductive and convincing voice. The Jedi threw a blast of Force energy at Daniele, but his Force shielding absorbed the brunt of the attack and he was only momentarily slowed. The Jedi used her now slightly increased lead to turn left down a corridor that led to a darkened room. Daniele followed her down the corridor and into the room. He saw nothing but the darkness beyond the light of his sabre. With a wicked smile he extinguished his sabre and closed his eyes, reaching out with the Force and searching the dark for his quarry.  
He found her, crouching behind an archway that led to an adjoining room, however, instead of igniting his lightsabre, he stowed the hilt on his belt and reached into a compartment on his breastplate and drew a vibro-dagger. Gathering the dark-side about himself and using it to conceal his movements and hide his intentions from his prey, he began to stalk towards his quarry, a wicked smile playing on his lips. He focussed the Force in his eyes and he was able to see her heat signature like a bright flare in the night sky. Her heart rate was through the roof and fear was coming off her in waves, she was terrified of him. He let her fear feed his power and fell into a crouch right on the other side of the arch she was hiding behind.  
He gauged her alertness at being on being far beyond the level of acuteness; the fact that she could still sense his presence with the sheer amount of Force concealment around him was astounding. He was beginning to hope that he was not going to have to kill her; she would make for an excellent Sith apprentice, but if he had to kill her, he would. He took a deep breath and let out a sigh, it had been a long time since he had fought an opponent with live steel, and it would be exhilarating to get close enough to his enemy to smell their fear, taste their sweat and revel in their fear. He flipped the dagger into a reverse grip in his right hand and prepared to attack.  
He took in a deep breath and lunged around the arch at his enemy, but she was just fast enough to deflect the dagger from hitting her square in the chest and took it only to her right shoulder. Blood spattered over Daniele’s face and began to pour from the wound; it was in that moment the lights in the room turned back on and revealed the swirling dark energy wrapped around Daniele, sparks of purple, red and grey lightning dashing from swirl to swirl. Daniele and the Jedi jumped away from each other, Daniele taking the dagger with him and causing the Jedi’s wound to gush with crimson blood.  
“It appears that my men have managed to get the primary power generators online again and not a moment too soon, because my next strike would have ended you immediately,” stated Daniele with a smirk, “with the lights back on you have a chance to escape or surrender, but know this little Jedi, you cannot win this fight.”  
The Jedi tensed and went into a fighting stance; she took her sabre into her left hand and ignited it once again, ready to fight. This took Daniele aback for a moment, he had given this Jedi a chance to survive and she had thrown it away. The Jedi charged, taking advantage of Daniele’s momentary confusion and swinging her sabre in a fairly well practiced arch, but Daniel could see that she had not trained her off hand very well. He blocked the blow with his dagger and drew his sabre with his left hand and swung for the Jedi’s stomach, she jumped back from the blow, but his sabre still singed her robes. He then dropped his dagger and charged at the Jedi with his sabre still in his left hand.  
“You seem determined to fight me,” he said as the Jedi blocked his blow and the two locked sabres, “so I will give you a fighting chance and fight with my off hand as well.”

He broke the lock and stuck for her again, she dodged the blow and managed to score a hit on his right pauldron, but the Mandalorian iron armour shrugged off the blow with minimum damage. He pressed his attack again, forcing the Jedi onto her back foot once again, it was taking a major toll on her to block each of his blows in time and she was tiring. Daniele decided the he wished to see the face of his prey just before she died and reached out with his right hand as their sabres locked again; he grabbed her mask and pulled hard. The mask came away from her face and he crushed the transparisteel mask in his hand.  
He looked towards his prey, expecting to see the nameless face of a young Jedi, but what he saw shook him to his very core and turned his reality on his head. The face he saw was not the nameless face of a young Jedi, but the face of the first woman he had ever loved, his high school sweetheart, Jeanne van Niekerk. The Jedi charged at him, sensing a moment of confusion and weakness, she managed to sever his off hand from his body and swung up again in an attempt to decapitate Daniele. However his reflexes took over his body and he caught the Jedi’s wrist in his and snapped the delicate bones in the wrist with a simple twist.  
The Jedi cried out in agony and dropped her sabre, the blue blade deactivating as it hit the ground, Daniele then crush the hilt under a heavy stomp and the Jedi cried out again in frustration. Daniele willed his battle helmet to deactivate and retract into his suit. He lifted the small Jedi into the air by her broke wrist and looked deeply into her chocolate brown eyes, searching for some kind of recognition from those eyes he had loved so much all those years ago. The Jedi’s eyes were filled with pain and contempt and Daniele found that his heart was hurt more deeply than he thought possible after all these years.  
“You don’t recognise me, do you?” asked Daniele, his eyes burning with hurt and anger.  
The Jedi let out a shout of anger and pain, she then fixed her eyes to his and spat through gritted teeth, “All I see is a monster!” the Jedi then actually spat at Daniele, but it fell short. Daniele felt pure rage and hatred flow through his being and he squeezed the Jedi’s now ruined wrist with all his strength and said, “Then scream for me little Jedi, scream.” The Jedi did precisely that, as well as writhe and curse, but Daniele did not stop until he heard a pop and the sound of tearing flesh. Blood sprayed all over Daniele from the Jedi’s wrist as she fell to the ground and Daniele looked towards his right hand and saw that he had the mangled remains of the Jedi’s hand in his own.  
The Jedi was grasping her stub of a wrist towards her body and sobbing incessantly, but Daniele was too filled with hatred to feel any form of sympathy and thus he threw the mangled hand at the Jedi’s feet and moved to retrieve his own hand from the ground. He positioned the hand at the stub of his wrist and watched as the nanobots in his bloodstream sewed the flesh back together and healed the burned and blackened flesh. Once his hand was fully attached he looked at the Jedi on the ground and noticed she was staring at her own severed hand in abject horror, she began to hyperventilate and fainted from shock.  
Daniele leant down to gather her up from the floor and hoisted her onto his shoulder; he then reactivated his helmet and heard that his comm was beeping, “Yes?” he asked the caller. “Your majesty, we have secured the enclave, did you secure your Jedi assailant?”  
Daniele smiled to himself and answered, “I did, get a shuttle for myself and the Jedi prisoners, I think that our new guests deserve the ‘royal’ treatment.”


	2. Questions

Daniele stood in the medical bay of the Vengeance and walked past the hundreds of wounded in this particular medical wing of his flagship. He was greeting the injured soldiers and speaking briefly with some of them, asking after their health and their families. He had done this hundreds of times during his century long reign over the New Sith Empire and had done it even before as a general in the armies of the United Terran Republic. However, he had come to this particular medical bay because his would be Jedi assassin was in a bacta tank being treated for her wounds and injuries, injuries that he had inflicted on the poor girl.

During the fight with the Jedi, he didn’t regret anything he had done to the Jedi, but after seeing her face he immediately regretted everything he had done to her and would have given almost anything to turn back the clock and make it as if he had not harmed her. This was because she shared the same face as his first love and now late wife. They had been married for nearly half a century before she was cruelly taken from him just after their twin sons Marcello and Angelo were born. A terrorist attack destroyed the cruiser that was transporting her on a diplomatic envoy to a recent addition to the Empire.

She had had the foresight to leave their twin sons on Terra and thus the boys were safe in the Imperial Citadel and so Daniele had a piece of her with him always, their children. His sons, now grown men with wives and children of their own were elsewhere in the Empire or on the front, pushing the Republic deeper into their own space. He pushed the thoughts and worries of his eldest sons as he came to the bacta tank section of the medical bay. He placed his hand on a scanner and was given permission to enter.

The walls of the large room were lined with bacta tanks, most of them with injured soldiers and Sith within them, but Daniele had had one of the few private bacta chambers that usually housed high ranking Sith and military personnel set aside for his Jedi captive. He was sure that she would not appreciate any actual care and attention from a Sith, but he was going to make sure that the nature of his special interest in this young Jedi was kept a secret.

He walked up to the attending physician and spoke in a solemn baritone, “Good evening doctor.”  
The doctor jumped slightly and looked up from his tablet to bow to Daniele, “Good evening your highness,” he said with a relieved look on his face, “Doctor Ian Richards at your service.”  
Daniele smiled, it was a pleasant surprise to have a Terran physician attending to his personal ‘guest’, he quite simply trusted doctors from his home system more, perhaps because of some childlike desire to be loyal to his home.  
“A pleasure to meet you doctor,” said Daniele with a light smile, “has it been you that has been looking after my special ‘guest’ in this medical bay?”  
Dr. Richards failed to supress a groan and immediately looked embarrassed, but he recovered quickly and launched into a report on the Jedi’s status, “Well your highness, she is a highly combative patient and we had to restrain her in order to get a DNA sample to verify her identity,” the doctor swiped his fingers across his tablet until he came to the correct file. “Ah, here it is, Jedi Knight Janna Warhammer, twenty four years old, born on the planet of Corellia to Jedi Masters Gragasion and Anaya Warhammer. She completed her training under Jedi Master Ben Skywalker and at the breakout of the Third Great Galactic War was stationed on the planet of Tanaab under the command of Jedi Master Hadrian Ouranos, whom is now deceased, killed at the hands of his kinsman, Darth Trajan Ouranos, his brother turned Sith two decades ago.”

“It seems that our young Jedi has led a rather exciting life, but I would like to know her medical condition as of now,” said Daniele, a hint of impatience entering his voice.  
The doctor quickly continued, “We have managed to take the measurements and fabricate a prosthetic right hand, however, she refuses to allow us to attach the hand and wrist. She refuses all food, thus we have been forced to give her sustenance with daily nutrient injections. She has destroyed three medical droids and has assaulted two nurses and the previous attending physician with a hyper dermic needle. Fortunately no one was injured.”

Daniele chuckled at the Jedi’s tenacity, but was disappointed in her attempts at a futile escape. That, however, was of no consequence; he had other interests in her.  
“May I visit the patient?” asked Daniele, with more than a little bit of authority in his voice.  
“I would not advise that your highness, she is highly unstable and likely to lash out at any perceived threat and honestly you are easily perceived as a threat,” answered the doctor, now flicking through the files on his tablet again.  
“Doctor, did they neglect to tell you how your patient lost her hand?” asked Daniele, his temper flaring slightly.  
“They said she lost it in the fighting around the enclave, I suspected that it was crushed by falling debris, what was left of her wrist was completely crushed and had to be resected in its entirety,” the doctor was too busy reading patient reports to notice Daniele’s rage building, but even a Force blind fool could pick up on the energy emanating from Daniele.

The doctor looked at his Emperor and realisation dawned on his face, “It was you?!” he asked, now horrified, “How did you…”  
However, he did not finish his sentence, Daniele cut him off with a wave of his hand and spoke, “I crushed her wrist in my left hand and clenched down hard enough to rend flesh and destroy tendons. I think I can handle myself doctor, now which private bacta chamber is she in?”  
“Chamber two-seven-four, the one with Force shielding,” said the doctor, not quite sure if he had just gambled with his life or not.   
“Thank you doctor,” said Daniele, walking towards the chamber, “I will be sure to make sure you are properly rewarded for your cooperation.”  
And with a wave of his hand, Daniele dismissed the doctor and moved towards the indicated bacta chamber, his mind now rushing with all the possible ways this conversation could go. It did not take him long to walk the two hundred meters of corridor to chamber two-seven-four and when he found himself in front of the chamber door, his stomach was doing somersaults.

He took a deep breath, he had not felt like this in several decades, but he knew how to stave off his nerves, picturing his children in their happiest moments. Their successes, their triumphs, the day each of them went off to the Sith Academy on Terra, silly moments around the supper table in his chambers and many more moments flew behind his eyelids.   
Steeled, he activated the panel on the door of the chamber and entered the hospital room to have a silver kidney bowl thrown at his head. He was just able to dodge it and the thing clanged against the wall of the corridor behind him and fell to the floor, bent at an odd angle. He then looked at his Jedi guest and was completely floored, she was in a simple hospital robe, but her natural beauty managed to entrance him.  
He shook it off and said, “Well it appears that you have recovered quite nicely.”  
The next thing that flew at him was the Jedi girl herself, she shrieked and tried to punch him in the face, but he managed to catch her left fist in his hand and held her other arm firmly in his left hand and got a look at the stub that was left of her hand. 

Janna tried to kick him in the groin but he stopped her with the Force, focusing on holding her legs still with his telekinesis. She still shrieked at him and Daniele began to lose his patience, “Ms. Warhammer, are you quite finished, I have something I would like to show and discuss with you.”  
That got her attention and she screamed at him, “Why would I want to even look at the man that mutilated me in cold blood!”  
Daniele immediately felt a pang of remorse at his actions; she had every right to be hateful of him and never want to see him again. She eventually stopped struggling and he held her an arm’s distance away from himself. He looked at her and cocked his head to the side, as if inspecting a particularly brilliant piece of art.

“You do realise that I have ordered that your hand be replaced with the finest biomechanical prosthetic hand that the galaxy has to offer?” he asked her, growing hopeful she would see that he was trying to make amends for his horrendous actions.  
Janna looked at him, her eyes burning with contempt, “I want nothing from you, nothing at all.”  
Her words hurt Daniele more than he thought possible; it felt as if he had been run through with a lightsabre. He placed her back on the floor, her entire body projecting hostility at him, but he would not be deterred.  
“You do not need to speak to me or accept the prosthetic limb, but I would ask you to look at a few photos that I have on this holo-pad here,” as he said this, Daniele reached into his blazer and pulled out the device.

With a few small gestures, Daniele opened the appropriate file and held the holo-pad facing Janna, the picture he was showing her was of him and his wife Jeanne on their wedding day, walking out of the Sistine Chapel on Terra. He was in an elegant burgundy and black Armani tuxedo with matching burgundy bow-tie and shoes. Jeanne was in a brilliant dress of white and the same burgundy as an edging on the dress. They were holding each other in a loving embrace and looking into each other’s eyes in a way that only suggested pure love. Daniele flicked to the next picture, one of him and his wife on their honeymoon in Venice, Italy, another of them holding court in side by side thrones in the Imperial Citadel, another of Jeanne the day she found out she was pregnant, another the day they found out they were having twins, then of her and their boys on the day they were born, of their first family portrait, of the first day the boys went to school and finally on the day she was headed to diplomatic talks on Brentaal, the last photo of the Empress.

During all of this, Janna looked more and more shocked as the pictures slid across the holo-pad, it looked as if her whole world was rocked to its core. She took the tablet from Daniele and stared at the looping slide shore for several minutes. Daniele just looked at her with a longing gnawing at his heart. It was several more minutes before she looked back at him and all she said was, “What are these photos? They can’t be real.”  
Daniele sighed deeply and looked at her with his bright red eyes, “Oh, but they are. Those photos are of my late wife, Jeanne Ray Montalbano, nee Van Niekerk. She died fifty six years ago, murdered by rebels and terrorists before my very eyes.”  
The words were hard to get out with a neutral expression on his face, but he managed. He simply kept quiet for a few moments, waiting for Janna to answer him; he did not have to wait long.

“I look just like her…” was all she said and then looked at Daniele with curious eyes.   
Daniele felt his breath catch; she looked so much like Jeanne that he had to remind himself that his beloved wife had long since passed away. He stared at her, the longing in his heart growing ever stronger by the moment.  
Janna broke the silence, “Is that why you didn’t kill me in the temple, because I look like your late wife?”  
Daniele felt the tears on his face before he knew he was crying, however, he managed to keep his voice level, “Yes, that is why I spared you.”

It was in that moment that Daniele could no longer hold in his tears and his sobs; he turned to the wall next to the door and punched it for all he was worth. The durasteel bent and buckled around his fist, but before he could repeat his action, he felt a hand on his shoulder and was immediately still, a gasp passing his lips. With tears still pouring from his eyes, he turned to look at Janna and could not believe what he saw; she was looking at him with absolute sorrow in her own eyes. He could not bear to see her like this, but he swallowed and simply said, “I have lingered here too long, I would like to ask you to please allow the doctors to attach the prosthetic hand to your arm and for you to look at the rest of the photos and videos on that holo-pad.”  
He awaited her answer, but only received a slow nod as a response, on impulse he hugged her and she froze in his arms. He quickly let go and left her with the holo-pad and many questions.


End file.
